


place of lies

by orphan_account



Category: EOS 10 (Podcast)
Genre: Backstory, Fistfight, Flashback, Gen, Knife Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 19:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7653304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She didn't see the knife until it was too late.</p>
            </blockquote>





	place of lies

**Author's Note:**

> I promised Kit and Rach pain and pain is what they get.

She doesn’t see the knife until it’s too late.

There’s a flash of silver as she aims her fist at the man’s face, a strange feeling of numbness that tears across her left cheek, and a rush of warmth to the area.

She stumbles back, shocked the first moment, then furious the next. Something drips into her gritted teeth, metallic and sticky and warm. Her friends standing behind her gasp in horror, then there’s the sound of a gunshot and the man in front of her crumples to the ground.

Spinning around, Ellie stares at the gun in Jacob’s hand. 

“What the hell did you just do?!” she yells, spitting blood out of her mouth. He stares at her, palling. 

“Ellie, bag it. He broke the rules, he lost anyways, and you just got stabbed in the fucking face.”

“It’s just a scratch!”

“You literally look like hell and someone probably heard the gunshot. We need to go. _Now_.”

Ellie opens her mouth to argue, but more blood hits her tongue. Glancing at the body behind her one last time, she yanks Jacob’s neckerchief from his pocket and presses it to the side of her face. “Fine,” she growls, motioning for the others to follow.

They sprint out of the building, the dead bugs and garbage that litter the rotting wooden floor crunching under their feet. Ellie stumbles a bit down the stairs, a wave of dizziness hitting her like a mac truck. Rebecca grabs her arm and hauls her upright, dragging her along the sidewalk and towards their warehouse base on Rue Sauval. 

Ellie pulls the neckerchief away from her face and feels her stomach twist. It’s nearly soaked with blood, pitch black in the moonless dark. Louise notices and grabs it from her, handing Ellie her own. She shoots Louise a grateful nod and tries to staunch the flow once more.

The double- then triple- vision begins just as they push the warehouse doors shut. Ellie’s legs give out underneath her and she slides down the wall. Her head is pounding, and a searing pain is beginning to creep up the side of her face that was slashed. 

“Shit,” says Jacob, pacing frantically, “shit, shit, shit this is not good. Do we have a med kit anywhere?”

Wordlessly, Rebecca scurries off and returns moments later with a box, whose contents she dumps out onto the floor. There’s some basic first aid supplies, as well as a small stash of narcotic pills, a set of needles and thread, and a flask that most likely contains some strong form of alcohol. 

“Does anyone know how to fix her? Like, right the fuck now?” Louise asks in a tight voice. There’s no reply, until Ellie’s phone buzzes from her bag. Jacob fishes it out, and is about to decline the call until Ellie mumbles, “No… give it here.”

He shoots her a worried look, but hands her the phone. She holds it up to the dry side of her face and manages, “Hey, Ry.”

“Ellie?” he asks nervously, “what the hell are you doing in the Lieu de Mensonges District?”

She blinks and shakes her head. “What? How- how do you know where I am?”

“I saw you running down the street with a couple other people. Where did you go, what are you doing?”

“I- wait, how did you see me? Why are you here?”

There’s a pause on the other end, and a kind of rustling noise. “That’s- I had to pick up something from a friend. What did you do?”

“Um…”

“Oh God, Ellie what the fuck did you do? Are you hurt?”

Jacob, realizing who she’s talking to, reaches down and grabs the phone from her. “You,” he says curtly, “are you Ellie’s brother?”

“I- yes. Who is this? What the hell have you done to her?” comes Ryan’s voice, uncharacteristically loud.

“I’m a friend. She’s hurt. Aren’t you a doctor?”

“In training!”

“You ever done field surgery?”

“What the fuck happened? And no!”

“Do you know how?”

“Yes, but-”

“424 Rue Sauval. You should be close. Hurry.”

And with that, he hangs up. He takes a clump of gauze from the kit and replaces the cloth on her face with it. Like the first, it’s drenched in blood.

“Fuck, fuck fuck,” he mutters, trying to keep pressure on wound. 

After a few agonizingly slow minutes, the warehouse door slides open, and Ryan steps in warily. He’s a little blurred around the edges from the blood loss, but Ellie swears that his eyes look… odd. They’re huge, with a strange green tint around the edges, and seem to have trouble focusing.

Jesus Christ, she must be bleeding harder than she thought.

He takes one look at her, panics for a good ten seconds, then rushes to her side.

“Oh my God, Ellie what the hell happened to you?!”

She laughs weakly, “The fucker brought a knife to a fistfight. Idiot. Showed him.”

“Why the hell were you in a fight?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Rebecca interrupts frantically, “fix her! Do your doctor thing!”

Ryan looks like he’s about to protest for a moment, before nodding and sweeping the contents of the med kit next to him. His hand hovers over the bottle of narcotics for a fraction of a second, before emptying a few pills into his hand and putting them in Ellie’s trembling ones. She washes them down with a swig from the flask, coughs (which makes the now excruciating pain in her face even worse), and blinks as the world goes dark and fuzzy at the edges.

“Hey… Ry?” she mumbles dazedly.”

“Yeah?” he replies, soaking a cotton swab with rubbing alcohol.

“Am I gonna die?”

“No. You’re not allowed to, okay?”

“Okay,” she says quietly, and sighs as the darkness bleeds into everything.

\---

 _Fourteen years later_.

“This is your fault,” Bäker tells her. 

She shrugs. “Partially.”

“Wholey.”

“About seventy-five percent.”

“More like ninety.”

“Eighty-five?”

“Fine. This is eighty-five percent your fault.”

Ellie elbows Bäker playfully. “Aw c’mon. You don’t actually think we’re gonna die here, right?”

He shoots her a look. “The odds point to that conclusion.”

“What have I told you about telling me the odds?”

“What have I told you about telling me what to do?”

“I’m your commanding officer. It’s kinda my job.”

“And you do it _so_ well. On your left.”

She nods at him and fires a shot at the thug coming at them from that direction. “Actually, I like to think I’m pretty good at what I do. You’re just grumpy because you don’t like getting shot at.”

“Dalias, no one likes getting shot at!”

“I don’t mind it.”

“That’s because you’re clinically insane.”

“Just ADHD, thanks. Don’t flatter me too much,” she quips, and stuns several more people.

“How could I? You have no limit,” Bäker replies and aims his blaster at the creature trying to get the drop on them from the ceiling. It explodes in a cloud of viscera above them.

“Hey Bäker, look! It’s raining men!” Ellie sings gleefully.

“Technically, that’s a Morravic Recturn.”

“Hallelujah!”

“Oh for Christ’s sa- Dalias look out!” Bäker exclaims, but it’s too late. A woman behind them fires a shot that grazes the pale scar on Ellie’s cheek.

And suddenly, everything stops.

Suddenly, she’s twenty one again, bruised and bloody and too out of it to realize that the man stitching up her cheek is as high as a kite, and the shaky stitches are creating a mess that will never be cleaned up. She can hear Jacob’s nervous pacing echoing on the concrete floor of the warehouse, can see Rebecca holding her hand and humming softly to her, and Louise looking protectively over Ryan’s shoulder the entire time.

There’s blood in her mouth and a numbness on her cheek, and someone is yelling her name.

“Dalias!” Bäker repeats, shaking her furiously, “Dalias what’s wrong?”

She turns and stares at him, eyes unfocused and distant. “R-Ryan?” she asks faintly.

“I- no, Dalias, it’s me. It’s Bäker, you’re okay. You got shot at but it just grazed you, you’ll be fine. Do you know where you are?”

“I… I’m in a market in Bangalia?”

“Yeah,” he breathes, gripping her shoulders tightly, “yeah.”

She shakes her head, the world coming back into focus. “I- shit. Shit.”

“It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re cleared to move on, do you need a minute?”

“N- no. I’m okay. Let’s go.”

Bäker looks at her with concern, but doesn’t protest. “Okay. You’re okay, Dalias. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Ellie says with a nod, wiping the blood off her cheek. “It’s just a scratch.”


End file.
